Elon Musk Retweets Manipulated Kamala Harris Campaign Ad, Breaches X Platform Norms

Social media platform X's owner Elon Musk has come under scrutiny for retweeting a parody campaign advertisement featuring Vice President Kamala Harris, potentially violating the platform's own regulations.

The retweet did not include any labels indicating that the content was misleading, NBC News reported.

The altered video borrowed segments from an original Harris campaign ad on YouTube, showing her addressing crowds and interacting with supporters.

However, the doctored version featured a voiceover mimicking Harris, portraying her as calling President Joe Biden senile and herself an incompetent candidate.

In the original campaign video, Harris poses a reflective question to voters, "In this election, we each face a question: What kind of country do we want to live in?"

This is followed by her breaking into Beyoncé's song "Freedom."

The spoof video begins with the impersonated voice saying, "I, Kamala Harris, am your Democrat candidate for president because Joe Biden finally exposed his senility at the debate."

The parody video claims Harris was chosen as the nominee due to her identity as a woman of color, labeling her as "the ultimate diversity hire."

The video also satirically accuses Harris of imitating Barack Obama's speech style and "trying to sound Black."

In the past week, Republicans have criticized Harris, referring to her as the "DEI candidate," insinuating her race and gender played major roles in her selection as the Democratic nominee.

A spokesperson for the Harris campaign, Mia Ehrenberg, condemned Musk and former President Donald Trump, saying, "We believe the American people want the real freedom, opportunity, and security Vice President Harris is offering; not the fake, manipulated lies of Elon Musk and Donald Trump."

Musk recently endorsed Trump's campaign following an attempted assassination against the former president earlier this month.

The parody video was first posted by a YouTube user named Mr Reagan.

X's policy on misleading content explicitly prohibits sharing manipulated media without proper labeling.

The policy says, "You may not share synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm ('misleading media'). In addition, we may label posts containing misleading media to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context."

As of Sunday night, Musk's retweet had garnered 127 million views, while the original post on Mr Reagan's YouTube channel had been viewed 194,000 times.